“A senhora disse-me que não ia mais comer as coisas do lixo”: a escrita inquietante como ferramenta de resistência e transformação social no testemunho da fome de Carolina Maria de Jesus

The book Quarto de despejo (2014), by Carolina Maria de Jesus, addresses the deprivations of the inhabitants of the Canindé favela between the 50s and 60s of the twentieth century. This article aims to reflect on this book, understanding it as a witness to the trauma of hunger, persistent in the Brazil’s peripheral black reality. For this, we mobilize a theoretical basis about Testimony Literature; writing as a tool of resistance and enabler of social transformation; and racial and gender issues. We conclude that the author exposed her traumatic reality of hunger, racism and dirt through her speech, using it as material for resistance and social transformation.